Systems Design Quotes

“Self organizing systems tend to be more resilient than bureaucratic systems.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Good systems design can be a major determinant of business success.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Dysfunctional systems ultimately suffocate functional things.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Systems design is critical to solving big problems.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“If you'd like to gain a better understanding of systems design, get into gardening.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Functional things cannot thrive in dysfunctional systems.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Asset protection is critical in business. And the best way to protect an asset is with systems that self organize and self execute behaviors which function as protective to the asset.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“If we want a circular economy; a permaculture economy - we need to design decay into products and processes as opposed to disposability. Manufacturers should design materials and products to programmatically biodegrade back into an economic ecosystem. This will allow for more efficient upcycling and the cultivation of various business opportunities in the process.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“There are a multitude of benefits that arise when we use stigmergic coordination for collective benefit in our business ecosystems.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Business opportunities are born at the intersections of systems.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“All systems produce results which incentivize their continuation. Systems are living beings — by nature, they prioritize self preservation. That's why it's important to apply data and wisdom to the design of systems.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“From a systems design perspective, cyclical models are superior to linear models.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Tokens and cryptocurrencies can be used to help coordinate human behavior at scale.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“A system which integrates additive manufacturing at scale allows products to be produced in smaller quantities more often and much closer to where the product will be utilized. And there's a direct correlation to demand as opposed to estimation.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Increases in cyclicality result in increases in efficiency which result in increases in productivity which result in increases in profits.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“In a system that integrates additive manufacturing at scale, shipping will be less about getting products from one place to another and more about getting commodities from each place to the other.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Cloud first software architecture is critical to designing efficient systems. All the hardware need to be capable of the most sophisticated things and then we can focus our attention on improving software capabilities.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Good management has a lot to do with incentives and decentives. It's about making sure the company has systems in place that incentivize desired behaviors and decentivize undesirable behavior.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Greenwashing is a problem. That's why the practice of just sticking a label like ESG on a company or a project isn't good enough. We need to have a systemic approach. We have to approach it from the ground up with systems design, not from the top down with labels.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“When we apply additive manufacturing at scale and fully integrate it into society from a systems perspective, it can revolutionize the flow of products in the supply chains. Logistically, we can get products to their destination instantly and with greater efficiency.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“A lot of business opportunities exist at the intersection of synthetic biology and material ecology. And when that's applied at global systems level scale, it has multiplicative value effect for humanity as a whole.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“What if instead of engineering materials, we engineer processes, in which case some other life form produces the materials, to the specificity desired by the system designers?”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr

“From a systems design and distribution perspective, we should put more emphasis on commodities than on products. This is how nature works — an economy where commodities are easily accessible and easily convertible into products.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“Nature ensures efficiency through self-sustaining systems. Businesses should do the same.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr

“The true potential of additive manufacturing is not with industry but with individuals. Instead of a system where giant factories manufacture products in mass then ship them on giant boats planes and trucks all around the earth just so a bunch of individuals each get a few things they ordered… we'll have a system where product designs are instantly sold purchased or licensed and manufactured instantly in millions of tiny factories in a decentralized network of production and consumption.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth

“building for scale that you don't need is a waste of effort and may lock you into an inflexible design.”
― Martin Kleppmann, Designing Data-Intensive Applications

“Politics is the only realm where adults, ironically, vote to become immature children and elect their parents.”
― Mohammed Zaki Ansari, "Zaki's Gift Of Love"

“Systems don’t kill creativity. Chaos does.”
― Mark Skalla, The Leverage Point: How Smart Founders Stop Doing Everything & Start Achieving Anything

“AI creates its own fog. The more sophisticated the algorithms, the less developers and engineers understand how the output emerges.”
― James Rickards, MoneyGPT: AI and the Threat to the Global Economy

“... bias in training materials is inevitable and there are better ways to deal with adverse effects than to scrub them out of existence. Efforts to eliminate bias would simply create new kinds of bias and distort the validity of the original datasets. Bias can be unjust by some standards but serves a useful purpose. ... the way to deal with it is to use other systems developed by those not involved in the original code, assisted by subject matter experts who could spot damaging bias in AI output and mitigate it in a commonsense manner. The way to deal with bias is not to eliminate it (you can't) but to identify bias and take it into account. Again, education and accountability are better than censorship and new biases.”
― James Rickards, MoneyGPT: AI and the Threat to the Global Economy